The Tennessee Supreme Court has issued an opinion in Bennett v. Trevacca Nazarene University. The summary: "We accepted this appeal of a premises liability case to determine whether the “independent contractor rule” adopted in Blair v. Campbell, 924 S.W.2d 75 (Tenn. 1996), relieves a premises owner from liability when a premises…
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a verdict in a case where a bus driver was attacked by a knife-wielding passenger, resulting a bus crash that resulted in several injuries and the death of the bus driver. A trial resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff passenger. First,…
The Oregon Supreme Court has ruled that a state recreational use statute does not bar a claim by a plaintiff who was injured while crossing the defendant’s land after engaging in recreational activity on an adjacent property. The facts: "Plaintiffs and their families drove on Highway 6 to a paved…
The South Carolina Supreme Court has ruled that a spectator at a hockey game may not sue when he is hit in the face by a puck, and cited Tennessee law in reaching its conclusion. The South Carolina Court said: "Primary implied assumption of risk arises when the plaintiff impliedly…
Did Burger King have a duty to design its stand-alone restaurant in such a way to protect its in-house dining customers from being struck by a car that came through the building’s wall? The Illinois Supreme Court addressed this problem in the case of Marshall v. Burger King Corporation, Docket No.…
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that a homeowner "owed a duty of reasonable care to the plaintiff relative to the storage of firearms kept in her home, to which a mentally unstable and violent person was given unsupervised access." Accordindly, the Court reversed a grant of summary judgment…
Here is the latest premises case involving freshly fallen snow. In Clifford v. Crye-Lieke Commercial, Inc., No. M2005-00376-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. App. M.S. July 11, 2006), Judge Koch and his colleagues affirmed a grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant in a slip and fall case involving freshly fallen snow.…
Here is a great opinion out of California that does a nice job of handling the “causation” issue in a case against a security guard company that is alleged to have failed to provide proper protection to a c-store employee. The case is Mukthar v. Latin American Security Company, B183968…
You have undoubtedly heard about the claim against a Benihana restaurant where a man allegedly died because he was hit in the face by a shrimp. The jury did not hold the restaurant liable. These were the facts according to the article at www.law.com: “On Jan. 27, 2001, Mr. Colaitis,…
When a employee is working on the property of another and is injured there is always a fight over whether the employee can sue the property owner who hired the injured person’s employer to perform the work. Here is a case out of California that the issue this way: “when,…